The Sidekick
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"There's lots and lots of people who don't want to find out what happens. hey don't wanna find out by reading a blog...."
Steven Spielberg |
Spielberg: Everyone one of these movies has a sidekick and Shia is the sidekick in this one. He really holds his own when he's given the opportunity, fighting side by side with Indiana Jones. There's one point in the movie I wasn't sure who I wanted to look at more. I was going from Harrison to Shia, Harrison to Shia. Oh my God, they're sharing the scene equally that's amazing.
Shia Laboeuf (Mutt): I watched a lot of movies to prepare to play Mutt. I watched a movie called Blackboard Jungle a lot, and I watched The Wild One all the time. And those two movies were on repeat. I would steal mannerisms, steal words - basically that was what my research was, just theft! I mean, the closest picture you can get of the time is in film, and so Steven would bring these DVDs in for homework. "Go watch this and find something."
Lucas: Shia got sent to the American Graffiti school of greaserland. And I became the consultant on his comb.
Laboeuf: I'd bring a switchblade to set and say, "Hey Steven, what do you think of this?" And before I had come to set, I had worked on it for like a month and a half, flipping it and being able to mess around with it in a cool way. I'd film myself and bring the DVD to show Steven and he'd say, "Yeah, that's awesome." So then we'd implement it. It's amazing how much freedom he does allow, you know. It's pretty incredible.
Back In The Saddle
Kathleen Kennedy: Day one we all looked at each other and went "Oh my God!" That's the first indication that the audience is going to have a blast because we had that feeling that they are gonna have when they first see that movie. That was the feeling we had when Steven rolled cameras on the first day. When we saw Harrison in the hat and jacket, it's just instantaneous, You feel that time has stood still.
Laboeuf: I have great memories of Karen when she first came on the set. She and Harrison met for the first time in over twenty years for the make-up and hair tests we did before we ever started shooting the movie - everybody on the set had tears in their eyes. People were walking off into corners, some of them not wanting to show their emotions. It was something to be experienced.
Karen Allen (Marion Ravenwood): It was so amazing. We kinda just threw ourselves into each other's arms. The very first scene we were shooting was actually a funny, quite difficult scene that required some sort physical thrusting of our bodies, we were both bumping into things and getting little bruises and I just found myself looking at Harrison and saying, you know, this is fantastic, I am so delighted to be working with you again.
Thrills And Spills
Ford: We did all the action stuff in the old school way. The big difference this time round was they figured out ways how to safety us. "Shia and I had a flying suit, a custom built harness where we could attach a wire so if something went wrong, we would have a safety net. For the warehouse leap, my hands are holding on but I'm safetied by a wire they take out digitally. They never used to do that.
Ray Winstone (Mac): Harrison drives the jeep better than the stunt man and we've got good stuntmen on this film. We obviously did some dangerous shit but the stunt boys have to do it because of insurance and because we're cowards.
Blanchett: We were doing a chase sequence through the jungle in Hawaii and all of a sudden, he wanted us to introduce a karate-chop sequence, so we had to get that together very quickly. It's a great way to work actually, because it means that everything you do is really fueled and focused by adrenaline.
Marshall: We tried to keep it in the style of the first three movies, so there's not a lot of wild camera moves, even though you can have the helicopter cam and the spider cam and all those things. We kept it within the tradition of the Indiana Jones movies. That was a rule that Steven set right off the bat and everybody worked within that. A lot of the time, it makes people more inventive.
Spielberg: We had the requisite snake, a beautiful giant snake to us, but not to Indy, of course. It was a rather large python. The audience wouldn't forgive us if we didn't have at least at one snake in the movie.
Back Of The Net
Marshall: In today's information age, secrecy has been a real challenge. Someone stole some of the proof sheets of the photos and, when he tried to sell them online, a Webmaster alerted us. We set up a sting and the guy was arrested. It was really great. People actually said 'No, we're going to respect Steven's vision'.
Lucas: Y'know, Steven will say, ''Oh, everything's out on the Internet - what this is and what that is.'' And to that I say, ''Steven, it doesn't make any difference!'' Look - Jaws was a novel before it was a movie, and anybody could see how it ended. Didn't matter.
Spielberg: But there's lots and lots of people who don't want to find out what happens. They want that to happen on the 22nd of May. They want to find out in a dark theater. They don't wanna find out by reading a blog.... A movie is experiential. A movie happens in a way that has always been cathartic, the personal, human catharsis of an audience in Holy Communion with an experience up on the screen. That's why I'm in the middle of this magic, and I always will be.
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